Richard Ansdell was a nineteenth century painter who painted lots of portraits of rural life in Scotland and England. In this particular potrait, he is potraying a Scottish game keeper and a brace of gundogs. Ansdell was well-acquainted with country life around Loch Laggan.
They might be setters or unusually colored wavy-coated retrievers. The reason why I think these dogs might be retrievers is that Ansdell clearly depicted setters in another portrait of a gamekeeper shooting blackcock. The dogs in this other painting are like modern red and white setters and lack the large size and heavier bone of the dogs in the above depiction. Further, the black and white dog shows brindling, something that was often associated with contemporary wavy-coated retrievers. Of course, setters in Scotland were often heavier than ones bred in Ireland or England and Wales.
Reddish colored wavy-coats were also not unknown at the time. Landseer painted one named “Breeze” in 1843. These dogs were typically culled from retriever breeding programs at the large estates, for this was a time in which the preferred retriever color was black.
Even if these dogs are setters, they closely represent the sort of dogs that the 1st Baron Tweedmouth would have been able to procure in his vicinity. It is from these local dogs that he would be able to breed his peculiar line, one selected for yellow or reddish hair that excelled in retrieving from the grouse moors.
Therefore, this depiction is of real historical significance in trying to understand what the golden’s ancestors were like.
Wow, that red dog sure looks like some Goldens I’ve seen!
Yet if you removed the game pouch and titled the painting “The shepherd,” I’d buy that, too.
Funnily enough, Ansdell was better known for painting shepherds and their dogs: http://www.gis.net/~shepdog/BC_Museum/Permanent/Ansdell/Ansdell.html
He did paint his share of gamekeepers & retrievers. As in the link I sent you yesterday morning —
http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=159411237
He also did some marvelous paintings of hounds. I especially like this one –
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/82717.html?mulR=14455
I like that one with the hounds, too. Would you call those deerhounds or lurchers or something like that? They look like a finer-boned version of my friend’s wolfhound.
Those are Scottish deerhounds. The wheaten color in them doesn’t exist anymore, but in one of their descendants, the American staghound, it still does.
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/staghound.htm
Thanks for the link to the collie pictures.
I have an image of “The Highland Keeper’s Daughter,” and had always thought the sheepdog looked aloof rather than envious. The hounds are leaping and unmannerly, while the sheepdog would not deign to be so rude.
The black and tan dog in several paintings certainly looks like many English shepherds I’ve known. Overall the dogs are more ESy than BCy. Ansdell painted before the BC was “developed” as such, before the show collie was invented, and what there were was “collies.”
Neat, neat post. :) Any chance you might know of a place I could find a print of that? Mom would love it.
http://www.artilim.com/artist/ansdell-richard/the-gamekeeper.aspx
I got this off of wikimedia, which is public domain.
Yes…this is almost certainly the type of “red setter” that Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks (later Lord Tweedmouth) would have thought suitable to use in his program of breeding retrievers. Although many later writers have said that the Irish Setter was used, there is no record of such (not to deny what might have taken place “back behind the barn”). The Guisachan record book states that Sampson was a “red setter” owned by ‘Edward’ — either DCM’s brother, or possibly his son (both named Edward).
Setters in those days came in a much wider variety of colorings. Pure white, cream, solid black, solid liver, pied, etc. Even earlier than Ansdell, Phillip Reinagle depicted some early setters that in substance, head type, and coat type could well be taken as retrievers.
The Irish setter influence came latter in goldens, when they were part of the flat-coat breed.
Lots of flat-coats were bred with Irish setters to straighten out the coats and “refine” them.
The three flat-coat lines that produced the yellows most likely included black flat-coats that had Irish setter crossed in. I highly suspect this with the Ingestre dogs.
There were prints of this painting distributed as awards that were printed and published January 12, 1898 by the National Art Society, 10 Lancaster Place Stand, W.D., the proprietors of the original plate, all rights fully reserved.
Can you provide any further information regarding these prints?
None, other than they were used by the GRCA (Golden Retriever Club of America) for historical purposes.
The only use by the GRCA that I know of, of any reproduction of this painting, was when it appeared as the cover of a GRCA magazine in the 1980s.